Mar. 13.
It fs a tribute to the potent influence of Dr. Sun Yat-sen that the difference between hi recently lingering state and his factual death is almost as great fas if he had retained full vigour to the end and had- suddenly been killed by a motor-car or a pistol shot. In no sense a great man, he was undeniably " great force. While he still breathed, he was still Sun Wen, a name to. conjure with amongst the Chin-fosse; his death creates a gap, a [sense of some enormous and ways unaccountable bias removed from the mechanism of! Chinese political life, which will need a total readjustment of perspectives. Even among foreigners his personality would never be denied; among the Chinese it was uncanny. It is true that the appeal he'was able to exert in earlier years had narrowed considerably. The Joverseas Chinese, disappointed at his continued failures, had begun to cut down the Cantonese business classes were disgusted with the combined oppressiveness and indeficiency of his administration, But the lower classes remained unaffected. No other man could have survived, as he did, the dis-race of the murderous assault made by his "Red" troops on the Merchant Volunteers and the burning of Saikuan. Even from his deathbed he continued to rule. Practically a dying man when he reached Peking early last December, he still had strength to quarrel with Tuan Chi-jui over the constitution of the Rehabilitation Conference fand, to lay down certain demands fre h te Kuomintang, have taken their cue of rigid aloofness.
History hax yet some distance to travel before the value, if any, of Dr. Sun's life to China can be accurately appraised. The present can only see with regret that his great influence was inever"used with success for any useful purpose. We thay agree with Mr. Tong Shao-yi_ that China can only learn what sort lof democracy she desires by process of trial and error. But in nearly fourteen years it might have been eavected that a man of Dr. Sun's ascendancy over other men would have evolved something to replace the old regime which he destroyed. So far irom this being the case, the South of China, where his influence was greatest and he had ithe field absolutely clear, is notoriously among the worst governed, most chaotic and Ihandit-ridden districts of China.
"Two examples remain of Dr. [Sun's rare attempts at construc-work: the famous scheme for covering China with a network of railways: and the Shanghai harbour scheme, in which the principal consideration would appear fo have beer hatred for Shanghai as it is. With all respect to the dead, it can only be said that both schemes are simply laughable in their _pueri A wiser man than Dr. Sun would have seen i ithe Merchant Volunteer movement in Canton a great patrioti force with which he might have: striven to ally himself. And possibly there was some such idea in his mind when he reviewed the Volunteers last June Jand made them a complimentary speech. Bet in the end he turned, or perhaps allowed himself to be turned, against' them and therewith jost his last chance in—and for—Canton, To-give him his due, Dr: Sun was inspired by @ great idea and generous purpose, He himself has told us how he wae fired to abandon a medical career by jthe contrast between the honest government and. prosperity of Hongkong and the wretched corruption and maladministration lof his own country. In viewing the ghastly failures of the Republic. one is easily tempted to think more kindly of the Manchu regime than it deserved. Let us. not forget that for the best parc of a century before they fell, the Manchis were manifestly. ripening for that fall; and when we criticize Dr. Sun for pulling' them down without adequate preparation of something to replace them, ft is morally certain that if he had not one 9, some other power or party would, Furthermore, it is to Dr. Sun's lasting honour that he did not: use his opportunities to enrich himself. Vast sums of money pissed through his hands and it is probable that he distributed it too freely among greedy followers, after the conventional Chinese official style, and with too little regard for nation purposes. But he personally was never more than moderately well off and whatever he took for his own needs it is but fair to say that those needs were modest. His foible seems to have lain in a rooted conviction that he alone could save China, In this he was perfectly' sincere. He kept himself in the limelight because it was physically impossible for hin: to belfove that anybody else could manage its. Towards the end of his life, it is difficult not to think that this belief a little ayected his sanity, and that it was for] this reason, when the best elements among the Cantonese began to draw away, that he threw himself into the hands of the Red element, who found an ea: way of achieving their own ends by flattering his egoism, connexion with the news Dr. Sun's death will be found the. opinions of sdme leading Chinese Liberals as to ite protable results. The most probable, we venture to think, is that there come a split his creation, the Kuomintang. of which there are already many indications. As Communist propaganda and the vicious power fof the Bolsheviks in Canton become more evident, the saner wing of the Kuomintang are at pains te prove that they are neither unti-foreign nor anti-Christinn, and to emphasize the nai character of their party. In which capacity there is indeed an abundance of good work for them to do. one like Di terrors even without an army ut his back. No one would care to speculate on the future of China, with civil war still lurk: ing in the wings of the political stage. But it may be that the igereral cimosphere be lightened by the removal of Dr.
Sun. At every juncture he has had to be allowed for and, if it he not too unkind a thing to say the only thing one could be cer tain of was that he would disagree whatever was proposed. In days to come, a differ-lent view inay be formed of his life. As so often remarked, fifteen or twenty years isa very lo time in the long tale of, chine and wider spaces of snarehy have separated one era of government from another.
We may yet see China arriving lat such state as will justify the many seeming caprices and irreconcilability of Sun Wen; and then, as present miseries face and dislimn in the amber haze of retrospect, the future will acclaim him, as his compatriots do already, a here. company of Fengtien men, numbering 126, hgs been travsterred from the Huchow Guild to Chenju, where they will be stationed as garrison.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.